Late afternoon the pause ended and more bodies were carried out and there were so many then – another 12 – that Michael wondered if the pause was more that the guys maybe hit a difficult part of the searching or whatever they were doing in there and now they had got past this obstacle and were bringing out all the bodies they’d found. It wasn’t clear. The more he looked out he wasn’t even sure anymore if they were cops (pigs), members of a insurgency, IFOR (?) or even Red Cross/Disney Corp down there anyway. They had uniforms but like Mum always said any idiot can get a uniform it was even more easy than getting a gun.

Jo had finished with the drugs at the point and was on the verge of calling Rental or Renal or whatever stupid name he went by at that time to come over and collect it all when suddenly there was another knock on the door.

It was not the knock that Mum had taught Renal, and it was not her regular knock and not her Secret Knock that was like a signal to flush the drugs away quick. It wasn’t like the freaky knock of the neighbour that was there already once that morning either. It was, frankly, unexpected and they (Jo and Michael) exchanged a look that contained a lot of information all compressed in the gap of a small space of time.

COMPRESSED it said on one wall already, in M’s handwriting and in another place near the emergency generator you could see where he had also written another word quite like that one: COMPRESSION.

Jo was looking like don’t answer the door and Michael was looking back at him. That’s how they stayed for a moments. And then the door opened anyway, fast, kicked inwards, with a very lot of force. And it was not mum, and it was not Renal, Rental or even Rectal or whatever. It was some other guy, some guy moving with TERRIBLE INTENT.

*

Later Michael was kind of shaky, like anyone would be after killing a stranger like that but he tried to be calm and he sat by the body to make sure it was dead and told Jo that their mum would be coming back soon and Jo was by then curled up in the corner, shivering/whimpering and they had hid all the drugs already and they had wiped the gun clean and thrown it out into the garbage.

While they waited for mum to return Jo was still on the whimpering thing and Michael went looking in the internets to search for a story that maybe he could tell him to help smooth out and pass the time. At All New Uncensored Google he typed in the words “wanted to get a good look” and then he pressed “enter” and then he watched the status bar flickering and waited for all the results.

Taxi Driver